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A man succeeds in completing a work only when his qualities transcend that work.

Cesare Pavese

Life is pain and the enjoyment of love is an anesthetic.
CESARE PAVESE

Enjoyment Life Love Pain
But here’s the worst part: the trick to life lies in hiding from those we hold most dear how much they mean to is; if not, we’d lose them.
CESARE PAVESE

Hide Life Lose People Trick Worst
What is to come will emerge only after long suffering, long silence.
CESARE PAVESE

Silence Suffering
Why does a man who is truly in love insist that this relationship must continue and be “lifelong”? Because life is pain and the enjoyment of love is an anesthetic. Who would want to wake up halfway through an operation?
CESARE PAVESE

Love Man Operation Relationship True Wake Up
The cadence of suffering has begun. Every evening at dusk, my heart constricts until night has come.
CESARE PAVESE

Beginning Heart Night Suffering
The problems that agitate one generation are exstinguished for the next, not because they have been solved but because the general lack of interest sweeps them away.
CESARE PAVESE

Generation Interest Problem Solve
All our “most sacred affections ” are merely prosaic habit.
CESARE PAVESE

Affection Habit Scared
A dream is a creation of the intelligence, the creator being present but not knowing how it will end.
CESARE PAVESE

Creation Dreams End Intelligence Present
We do not free ourselves from something by avoiding it, but only by living though it.
CESARE PAVESE

Avoid Freedom Live Ourselves
You cannot insult a man more atrociously than by refusing to believe he is suffering .
CESARE PAVESE

Insult Man Refusal Suffering Yourself
No one ever lacks a good reason for suicide.
CESARE PAVESE

Goodness Reason Suicide
The man who cannot live with charity, sharing other men’s pain, is punished by feeling his own with intolerable anguish.
CESARE PAVESE

Angry Charity Himself Live Man Pain Share
We never remember days, only moments.
CESARE PAVESE

Day Moments Remember
Human imagination is immensely poorer than reality.
CESARE PAVESE

Human Imagination Poor Reality
Perfect behaviour is born of complete indifference.
CESARE PAVESE

Born Complete Difference Perfection
The closing years of life are like the end of a masquerade party, when the masks are dropped.
CESARE PAVESE

Drop End Life Party
The slowness of time, for a man who knows nothing will happen, is brutal.
CESARE PAVESE

Brutal Man Slow Time Willing
Living is like working out a long addition sum, and if you make a mistake in the first two totals you will never find the right answer. It means involving oneself in a complicated chain of circumstances.
CESARE PAVESE

Addition Complication Live Mistake Right Work
We care so little of other people than even Christianity urges us to do good for the love of God.
CESARE PAVESE

Care God Love People Religion
The whole problem of life, then, is this: how to break out of one’s own loneliness, how to communicate with others.
CESARE PAVESE

Break Communication Life Lonely Problem
Those philosophers who believe in the absolute logic of truth have never had to discuss it on close terms with a woman.
CESARE PAVESE

Discussion Logic Philosophy Woman
Life is not a search for experience, but for ourselves. Having discovered our own fundamental level we realize that it conforms to our own destiny and we find peace.
CESARE PAVESE

Destiny Discover Experience Life Ourselves Peace Search
But all years are stupid. It’s only when they’re over that they become interesting.
CESARE PAVESE

Interest Lost Stupidity Time Wisdom
To know the world, one must construct it.
CESARE PAVESE

Construction World
A man is never completely alone in this world. At the worst, he has the company of a boy, a youth, and by and by a grown man – the one he used to be.
CESARE PAVESE

Boy Growth Himself Man Philosophy Wisdom Youth
Nowadays, suicide is just a way of disappearing. It is carried out timidly, quietly, and falls flat. It is no longer an action, only a submission.
CESARE PAVESE

Action Disappear Fall Quiet Submission Suicide
There comes a day when, for someone who has persecuted us, we feel only indifference, a weariness at his stupidity. Then we forgive him.
CESARE PAVESE

Day Feeling Forgiveness Himself Stupidity

A man succeeds in completing a work only when his qualities transcend that work.

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A man succeeds in completing a work only when his qualities transcend that work.

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